the death of wendy

what an awfully big adventure t'would be
to die so young, so magnanimously

there broods a girl who lies in Kensington;
the child-mother who turned twenty-one,
she stares at the stars while she lays supine
and dangles her feet in the Serpentine.

'oh to be a child, to be a bird
to sing and dance and fly, oh to be cured
of life, and hearts that break and hopes that try
not to give up, oh not to want to die'

how childish love hath wrought so mature a grief
that must she make her bed for his memory,
for his heartless youth and the feeling still
she thought was love...and now her love to kill

so she bends down to kiss the cheek of death
with hero's lips pressed to immortal flesh
and wins her sleep beneath the soft still rill
where mermaids keep and heavens weep their fill

soon a child alights with hands on hips
disheveled hair and the smell of pirate ships...

his breath is short; the child's heart breaks
he sinks to his knees, his head his hands take
bitter tears flow warm as the orphan cries
and curls into a ball as his Wendy dies


What an awfully big adventure t'would be
to die so young, so magnanimously,
to quit this life and grasp the evil hand,
to reach the stars and to never land

four day fragments

she cried, i just stood there
it's hot under these lights--
you get drunk, i'll be our ride
dancing with wine bottles in their hands
pouring rain outside on us
eventually say your last goodbyes
we'll stay here, or go bowling
i think i'll miss you guys
mushroom john just bowled a strike.

he passed the sobriety test
officer i wasn't impressed.
we went to climb the statue
i'll just piss on this wall
the ground won't sway as much
down here there isn't the fall.
we went back to the apartment
i don't remember much after that
except that i threw up before bed.
went down town for coffee next morning
before practice at three--
you guys take shots, we'll get the bucket of balls
annie sliced and then chased after the club--
rehearsal dinner tacos and unfinished ice cream
sneak outside and go sit on the swings
and watch the sun set behind the silo
again and again.

i spent the rest of saturday
looking for a table to belong to,
but everyone was a stranger to me,
so i wandered around pretending i had something to do
wishing i had somewhere to be.
most days i would rather be on my own,
than feeling alone in a crowded place,
you're not really my family, my friends
only empty shirts with a familiar face.

i felt nothing then, but peace and the breeze
feet pumping, sun behind the trees.
i swing and sing the rowing song,
i keep this moment even though it's gone.
time to go back down the hill
you guys drink and we'll play games with brides maids,
al pacino takes three hours to kill deniro
fifteen minutes left an hour ago,
i just want to be coherent tomorrow.

he's not really the one getting married in a half hour
but we'll play along for his free drink
bartender this is the biggest mistake of his life,
our tuxedos make us liars--
2 a.m. stranger, we will give you a ride
so you won't have to stumble down these city streets
don't forget your knives.
she's probably nicer in the daylight

weddings are alright
receptions are depressing
everyone finds tears and wine
but i avoid expressing
anything inside of me
that one might find impressing.
my lack of words, wont to wander
and conclusions drawn about my life
are perhaps the most distressing,
and what i fear i'll never feel
won't always be a blessing

no you didn't slur your speech
i remebered saying the day before
as jim answered the door
still wearing his tuxedo,
he slept on the apartment floor,
on the couch still lay my brother
and we laughed at the parody
of our lives against each other
on a sunday afternoon.
no i can't turn down the sun
idiot

What we do with it

I am an island I cannot escape
So I wade out in the waves
And watch as lives sail by
Hoping that my memory saves
The stories I would have told you.
Slowly I begin to waste away
Losing all that I believe in
You should be here, be part of me
In my mind wandering day dream.
We could pretend everything is alright
We would play castaways
Or some other foolish children’s game
So that we wouldn’t feel alone
And we’ll forget that we’re afraid.
We would play it so beautifully
I would drown you then I'd sink myself
Ten times until we washed ashore
Then lay there pushing sand between our toes
Until we made new hearts to explore.
Oh perfect day of our lonesome lives
Only our childish minds to be our guides
But youth is fleeting and the child dies
On a lonely beach with dirty feet
And this stupid smile I keep inside.
I feel a bit absurd most days, but it’s ok
I just can’t connect the stories of my life
I can only lay them side-by-side
And say they’re fragments and memories
That still hold some meaning to me
The pieces I use to explain
The tidal waves that bring me back here again.

You say that we’ll be rescued some day
And we’ll live better lives in a better place
That sounds quite nice, yes, nice
Tell it to me again tomorrow, or the day after that
Because today it doesn’t mean much to me
I’m still here on this island in this sea
This is what’s real, me, and this place
And the future’s not a boat, it’s only hope
To divert your mind from the life you face.
You're so damn scared of being alone
You refuse to live the only life you've known
And so you've left, and we can no longer connect
This island all to me
And you smiling at the bottom of the sea.

who indeed

Can I blame you for disappointing me? You failed to meet my standard, perhaps the fault is in my standard. Perhaps I should not project my desires onto you and then sulk when you fail to fulfill. I often wonder if I can even know you. I know you are here in the world, but you are to me not what you are to yourself, you are my perception, my interpretation. I objectify you, classify you, I ascribe traits and tendencies, aversions and affinities, so many concepts to define you. But are you more than my categories, can you transcend my adjectives? If you can, then how might you describe yourself? What are you that I cannot reduce to a concept or tendency? Some days I am afraid you might not be anything more than the sum of your actions and proclivities, perhaps nothing more than a collection of memories. I like to think thatÂ’s not true. But all you can ever be is a memory to me; you are never present without me projecting memories mixed with expectations onto you. I am going to pretend there is an essential you and an essential me, but who are we essentially? Can you have a personality without me? Are you only nice because I am mean and only funny because I laugh, only artistic because I am not? Maybe our only relation is relativity. Arbitrary? Sartre and Heidegger have ruined me. I will pretend anyway, because I like you, or the you you are to me. This is only foolishness anyway because what happens when one considers such ideas? If I subtract your humor from you, are you still you? what if I take away yourintelligencee? or your happy disposition? Are you still you? Where do we end and our unessential qualities begin? Tell me you are an individual and I will tell you 'so what'. You are only an individual because you are somehow different from everybody else, your individuality is dependent on everyone else, it's only relative. What is worse than not knowing who you are? Not knowing if you are.

let me down

love without a kiss and we live alone
you feel it more as you drift from home
but what's to feel in your fading words
when my guiding lines are becoming blurred
what i thought was true was thinking true was real
and real was the same for both of us to feel
but i feel lost and you feel regret
you don't care and i am cold and i wish we never met
i wish i could hate you and hate your memory
love him more than you love forgetting me


this too

you pause to think of the past
none of this life...no it won't last
these thoughts are only evanescent
only ever here and then passing present
you wish some days the pain could last
but what we feel is felt so fast
if it lingered some, it might be pleasant
but you can't know what will not stay
and time you learn is wont to stray
so how can we feel at home
when home is but to feel alone
tell me now the words i must pray
this too shall pass some better day
you pause...

musings

from the library:
why are there potted plants all over the library? am i going to forget i'm inside, this isn't a foliage zoo. why don't they just put the plants outside and let them freeze, they aren't fooling me.

from the coffee shop:
feeling levity in moments of despair, sad songs that make you smile and you are at peace because you know everyone else is also a heartbroken failure, worse still are those who aren't, those who realize their dreams meant more when they were unfulfilled, now they know the let-down of a dream realized. i smile at despair because i feel most alive when i am the lowest, and smiling in such circumstances makes me feel absurd, and most days absurdity is the only genuine feeling left and the only word that still means what you think it does.

how do you deal with disappointment; when those you don't even know, but would like to, seem to let you down, your idols turn into blocks of wood and the world is a lesser place when you find out they are flawed, when you realize they are just like you.

maybe we feel like saving people sometimes because we want to be saved ourselves, and we think there is some personal redemptive quality in saving someone else, long since given up on being saved ourselves, whether we admit it to ourself or not, maybe if we're someone's savior then they'll get to feel that which we wish we could.

the girl across from me is staring out the window like she is waiting for someone, but she is slowly realizing that she will be alone tonite, so she looks with an empty gaze at the cars in the drive through and imagines that someone, anyone is coming to meet her. she has nowhere to be so she'll look out the window a while longer until she's finally tired of feeling stood up and leaves, her embarrassment and hurt will turn bitter.

poems about no one and danny

October 11
lovers kiss where lips don't touch
eyes wide open staring clutch
her attention and her guile
in the shape of her faint smile
and we're not looking away
when the games that we'll play
died in this, moment of bliss
these seconds when our eyes kiss
i know you'll remember this

September 4
sunday afternoon early september
i'm missing the days that i remember
sitting on a red pew in this wedding tomb
friends and some flowers and an ill-lit room
celebrate the triumph of her gender
and ceremony of his blissful doom
a funeral for his youth's surrender

November

My November Guest
My sorrow, when she's here with me
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolates, deserted tress,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauty she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reasons why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of Bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

Frost.

Revulsion
Though I waste watches framing words to fetter
Some unkown spirit to mine in clasp and kiss,
Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better
To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.

For winning love we win the risk of losing,
And losing love is as one's life were riven;
It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using
to cede what was superfluously given.

Let me then never feel the fateful thrilling
That devestates the love-worn wooer's frame,
The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling
That agonizes disappointed aim!
So may I live no junctive law fulfilling,
And my heart's table bear no woman's name.

Hardy.

Ode to a Nightengale
...Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Keats

R. Frost

A Late Walk

when i go up through the mowing field,
the headless aftermath,
smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
half closed the garden path.

and when i come to the garden ground,
the whir of sober birds
up from the tangle of whithered weeds
is sadder than any words.

a tree beside the wall stands bare,
but a leaf that lingured brown,
disturbed, i doubt not, by my thought,
comes softly rattling down.

i end not far from my going forth,
by picking the faded blue
of the last remaining aster flower
to carry again to you.


Reluctance

out through the fields and the woods
and over the walls i have wended;
i have climbed the hills of view
and looked at the world, and descended;
i have come by the highway home,
and lo, it is ended.

the leaves are all dead on the ground,
save those the oak is keeping
to ravel them one by one
and let them go scraping and creeping
out over the crusted snow,
when others are sleeping.

and the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
no longer blown hither and thither;
the last lone aster is gone;
the flowers of with hazel wither;
the heart is still aching to seek,
but the feet question "whither?"

ah, when to the heart of man
was it ever less than treason
to go with the drift of things,
to yield with grace to reason,
and bow and accept the end
of love or a season?

Candles

it's my birthday tomorrow,
no one here could know,
i was born this thursday
twenty-two years ago.
and i feel stuck watching history repeat me
well am i just a kid who knows he's needy



Something's stirring in the trees
a stale air does move the leaves
it holds me here, this ill-birthed breeze
float you grey-hued feather
from the tangled heather
the sober song of a bird then cried
you were born the day that summer died

early august

i walk the mowing fields
uniform golden stalks cut down
combed, pathed and thatched
revealing furrowed ground
to the edge of the field
fir limbs and pine boughs
reach from the dark wood hollows
to the new and uncut fields
where the stalks and stems stand tall
full with no machine-line shadows
their heavy whiskered heads
lean sideways as if to hear
songs of birds
thoughts of bees
and rabbits words
the sun lurking in the west
on the glowing jagged crest
crowned with golden praise
and outstretched rays
to burn the mountain breast
now the valleys fade
into dark-hued hilltop shade
turn the corner to where the hay is laid
in soft feathered rows
combed smooth in lines
and sleep in repose
to the southwest corner
where the elm and birch trees
stand round tina's old house
and ill-kept yard
freckled with dead leaves
like some memories discard
turn left
behind; the salmon colored sky
where there was sun
and polar pink-hued purple
where there is none
and this old tar road
no lines or curbs
nor signs but those
that farmers and grandparents chose
for foreigners to mind
a single cricket finds my ear
finds it well
and plays as if to praise
or soon cast a spell
on the pale sliver in the sky
to bring it low, or take him high
one last turn around hopper and peck
on this road that seldom winds
all bare save the poles
and the their two power lines
come to the parsonage
and the old church van
the yellow ped-sign
with the black stick man
walking with a floating head
and appendagless hand
the road we used to walk
sometimes i still do

alice

Upon this bench my thoughts collect and compose
Memories of one I met a year ago
The withered leaves from naked trees
Blow peacefully on bye
I in repose and dark-hued clothes under September sky

We had been through so much together
My dear sweet Alice and I
In our short time of dark damp weather
And we had some good times but
-The best I can’t make rhyme
Only in the end when like faded friends
-You left without saying goodbye
You just left me alone with my pen and
-Paper
See you later then

I did dream one night that I had wed
A lonely girl with chestnut hair
Whose coffee eyes in pensive stare
Could move my dreams outside my head
But dreams are best when left unsaid
For often they will bring despair
When born to life we soon find them
-Lying dead

Slowly as the seasons changed for reasons of the dying sun
-She had become
Unstable and undone
To whom could she run
When the memories fade
And shes holding a gun
In heroic grey shades

So she sits on the edge of her bed
Without tears left to shed
And shes picturing me
When I find her there dead
And shes finally free
And I’m holding my head
Saying how can this be
You could have killed me instead

Then she touches the note
That she sprayed with perfume
And the words that she wrote
Like the scent of the room
Linger in empty evening dress like a rose
-That could not bloom

In the dark a decision is made
And a shell hits the floor
Shes no longer afraid
And she leans on the door (what the hell was it for)
It’s been years since she prayed
But she needs them no more
All is quiet in my life like it was before


My secret dead wife whose short invented life
-Is not just what I remember
The haunting pictures on my wall
Her hair ties I wear on my wrist
The wedding rings
We made from string
The shirt I wore when we first kissed
And the vows we made but could not bring
-Ourselves to keep like we had wished
She will be missed

emails

she types out her heart with thoughtless care
or so i guessed in my best despair
don't send to me so carelessly
all your cavalier memories
that make me wish i could be there
with you and your sister
summer night coming back from the fair
jump out of the car and dance all night
dip spin twirl you close in, briefly tight
and let you go to dance alone
come back to me under the street lamp light
this feels right
i read this and think of you, you do too
think of me so carelessly
to remind me you remember

Buddha says

Imagine a man who has been pierced by an arrow well soaked in poison, and his friends and relatives go at once to fetch a physician or a surgeon. Imagine now that this man says:
“I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know the name of the man who shot it, and the name of his family, and whether he is tall or short or of medium height; until I know whether he is black or dark or yellow; until I know his village or town. I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know about the bow that shot it, whether it was a long bow or a cross bow.
“I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know about the bow-string, and the arrow, and the feathers on the arrow, whether they are feathers of vulture, kite or peacock.
“I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know whether the tendon which binds it is of an ox, deer, or monkey.
“I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know whether it is an arrow, or the edge of a knife, or a splinter, of the tooth of a calf, or the head of a javelin.”
Well that man would die, but he would die without having found out any of these things. In the same way, anyone who says: “I will not follow the holy life of Buddha until he tells me whether the world is eternal or not; whether the life and the body are two things, or one thing; whether the one who has reached the Goal is beyond death or not; whether he is both beyond death and not beyond death; whether he is neither beyond death nor is not beyond death.”
Well that man would die, but he would die without Buddha having told these things.
Because I am one who says: whether the world is eternal or not, there is birth, and death, and suffering, and woe, and lamentation, and despair. And what I do teach is the means that lead to the destruction of these things.
Remember therefore that what I have said, I have said; and what I have not said, I have not said. And why have I not given and answer to these things? Because these questions are not profitable, they are not a principle of the holy life, they lead not peace, to supreme wisdom, to Nirvana.

Majjhima Nikaya 1. 63

drifting

the three of us on upturned raft
floating in the cove
two lazy ores and lazy draft
our sailor stories make us laugh
peacefully we rove

my feet dangling over side
sun rays paint our skin
through the water toes magnified
i kick a bit to aid the ride
and once i jumped in

slowly rowing i and ethan
back from docks we came
paddle turn and talk to nathan
of this peace and hope my faith in
next year stays the same